There are a couple of creative activities that my children often request and they have one thing in common – they all involve using water.

Some creative experiences that require water include:

1. Watercolour pencils.

When it comes to watercolour pencils it is definitely worth investing in a decent quality set. They are easy and fun to use. My children usually draw all of the picture first and then do the painting (with water) at the end.

2. Watercolour paints

Watercolour paints are perfect  for creating unique and fun pieces such as tie dye tissue paper. We have used our tie dye tissue paper as gift wrap, to cover books and journals as well as to create a fairy house and Easter table decoration.

I wrote about the process to tie dye tissue paper in this blog post.

Photo below: Tie dye tissue paper used to cover journals (we were very excited to see “a robot” in one of the tissue paper designs, so we added some foam pieces and pipe cleaners to create a robot)

More details about our tie dye tissue paper fairy house can be found in this blog post.

You can learn more about how we made an Easter table decoration, using tie dye tissue paper in this blog post

Watercolour paints combined with crayon shavings create stunning pieces.

We have used this wax resist technique to create shadow puppet boxes as well as recycled  fairy and dragon wings.

I wrote about the shadow puppet box in this blog post.

I wrote about the fairy and dragon wings in this blog post.

3. Paper towel creations.

This technique is perfect for the younger members of the family.

Invite children to draw (with coloured felt pens) all over the paper towel – the more colour the better!

Then press a damp sponge onto the paper towel and watch the colour diffuse to create some lovely effects.

Instead of using a sponge, older children may like to use a water bottle with a spray nozzle to spray a fine mist of water over the coloured paper towel, or use pipette droppers to apply some water.

In the past we have used some paper towel creations to make colourful butterfly wings (the bottom two butterflies featured in the photo below). Pipe cleaners were used to make the butterfly “frames”.

4. Rain Paintings

Place a few drops of watercolour paint, or food colouring, onto a paper plate.  Take the coloured paper plate into the rain. Tilt the plate in different directions and enjoy watching the different colours run all over the plate to create lovely artworks.

We have displayed some of our favourite rain paintings on our nature memory wall.

5. Foam and Water scenes

Invite older children to cut coloured foam sheets into pieces to create a foam picture. To secure foam pieces to glass, apply some water to the back of the foam piece.

For my younger daughter, I cut the foam pieces into various shapes (cut shapes that are of interest to your child, perhaps farm animals, transport vehicles, outer space shapes etc) and then show younger children how to stick the pieces onto the glass. Using a paintbrush or sponge to dab some water to the back of the foam piece works well.

Some of our favourite foam scenes have been ones we have used to create a story or re-tell one of our favourites.

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